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babbledabbler

107 karma · joined December 5, 2019

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babbledabbler··on Don't let event-driven architecture buzzwords fool you
I concur with this article. The main pitfall I've seen with EDA (or really any other design paradigm) is buzzwords.

Buzzwords are pernicious because they induce a socially held belief instead of an intuitively grasped concept. This tends to lead to whatchamacallit architecture (aka distributed monolith casserole). To counteract this there needs to be a grokking process by the organization to dissolve the buzzwords into clear organizational understanding and buy-in. This exercise is often overlooked to ill effect.

babbledabbler··on Stop Saying “Technical Debt”
I don't think "technical debt" in and of itself is a fatally flawed term. The issue is that any term that becomes widely used jargon loses the preciseness of its meaning. Unless you address the root problem of having terms lose their meaning, replacing "technical debt" with "maintenance load" will eventually fall into the same trap.

The same can be said for "stand ups" in which most people sit down, and for "agile" which usually doesn't involve the practices that produce agility on a team.

For me I like the term "technical debt" because it succinctly describes a complexity cost that accrues interest over time. It doesn't simply mean "bad code". You can work with that cost to prioritize more important work however eventually if you don't pay it down, it will catch up with you and you will be spending your time and money on paying off the interest rather than investing in your features.

Another term I like to use in tandem with "technical debt" is "technical investment". Technical investment is spending time and effort on things that will return a benefit over time, either reducing technical debt, or enabling more features.

babbledabbler··on Show HN: I made Hacker News but for research papers
This is so cool. Simple concept, clean interface. Nice job. I hope it takes off.
babbledabbler··on Robert's Rules of Order (1876)
I'm building an app that implements RR! It's called Meet Robbie. Check it out: https://meetrobbie.com

I've been working on it for over a year and we plan to release sometime in the next 6 months. We take RR and make it the basis for a meeting operating system. The rules can be adjusted so that you can use a lightweight set of rules if it suits you better, hence the name "Meet Robbie".

Any feedback on the idea is much appreciated. (and sorry for the shameless plug. I can't resist)

babbledabbler··on Supabase Vault
This is true but for me the transparent abstraction over Postgres is actually a big plus though I can see that people who don't know postgres or SQL would be a little intimidated. I will say that postgres is the best SQL DB I've worked with and has become my goto.

In my experience there's no free lunch when it comes to high level abstraction over complicated systems. Also, having the option to draw upon the mountain of docs and info on the net about Postgres is nice to have in your back pocket. Of course the tradeoff is that you need to know SQL but I think that's a fair tradeoff.

I would like to see some more improvements over supabase js client api, but I hope they don't hide the fact that there's a relational DB under the hood and allow advanced access to the underlying postgres API.

I could see them making a nosql supabase over something like a mongo type DB like AWS does with document DB or even postgres jsonb fields. That would be nice feature. You could probably get a lot of mileage out of postgres JSONB fields.

I haven't used firebase much except for toying around with it but I think it's certainly a good option for simple nosql db for simplicity and speed of ramping up. Only thing with Firebase is that the cost is prohibitive at larger scale and you're going to be coupled to then when you get to that point so it could come as a rude awakening when your app starts to get a lot of users.

babbledabbler··on Collection of best practices for providing and consuming webhooks
Seeing this right after finishing a webhook integration.
babbledabbler··on How to Improve Your Monolith Before Transitioning to Microservices
Yep have seen this firsthand. Beware the evangelist who shows up bearing fancy new architectural patterns and who can't be bothered to understand nor discuss details of the existing system.
babbledabbler··on Hacking F-117A
I loved this game growing up. (F-19 I never got F-117A). Thanks for bringing back memories.
babbledabbler··on Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
I see it as a tech debt bubble cycle and almost inevitable in any industry/field. It will always ebb and flow.

On one hand it make work unnecessarily complicated and in some cases creates political problems because the more complicated a solution is the more governance, and the more governance, the more politics. A lot of these solutions get put in place because the people promoting them are incentivized to be the one who found the "solution".

On the other hand it creates new opportunities for those who have the courage to not accept other people's assumptions about what "good" is and to find out for themselves and separate the wheat from the chaff. If you can adeptly use Occam's razor to decide for yourself what works and what doesn't you'll be ahead of the curve. Just keep calm and code on.

babbledabbler··on Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others
It's usually a mistake to build a large scale solution without consulting with others in your organization or team. Other engineers often have good feedback that will make your solution better and you are likely missing some core premise or context.

It's also a mistake to seek too much approval from others before proceeding. In any group of X people, Y% won't agree with you, and of those, Z% will be uncivil. By uncivil, I mean harsh criticism or otherwise toxic behavior that is not constructive.

If the organization is healthy that Z% is small and troublemakers will be handled by management if they do act up. If not that Z% will basically become like bridge trolls and you will be opposed by a confederacy of dunces every time you try to do something of consequence.

I've experienced both of these scenarios, and striking the right balance is an art and a science that boils down to reading the politics of the place and getting buy in from some key people so that your project at least has a fair shot. Sometimes the place has gone toxic and it simply can't be helped.

If you're in a situation where there is a high percentage of Z, you should ask yourself if the work you are doing is worth playing the politics necessary in order to get the job done. If yes, get smart, read books like the The Prince and Art of War and figure out how to play the game. If not, get outta there as expeditiously as possible, and put your time and effort to something more worthwhile. If you want to be kind, let management know in a professional way exactly why you are leaving so that they can have an opportunity to try to make life better for your colleagues.

babbledabbler··on WordPress themes, plugins backdoored in supply chain attack
I recently had to take over a wordpress site for a volunteer project and it almost immediately got hacked with spam despite taking great pains to not have this happen.

Thousands of SEO pages showed up in the DB after installing some well known marketplace plugins. I was able to remove the hacked plugin and fortunately, it wasn't a big deal as this was just a temporary site for an event, but I would never work on wordpress again and I dissuade people from using it when I hear that they are considering it.

It was great for its day, but times have changed and it's just not a secure platform.

Any benefit given by all the plugins is outweighed by "hack roulette" you are playing when you install and customize them.

There are now many other solutions out there that will be more secure and fit the need for most people.

babbledabbler··on Examining the covidtests.gov architecture
"Effective, mission-critical software at scale need not be complicated." Amen.
babbledabbler··on Handbook of Graph Drawing and Visualization (2013)
Thank you for sharing. What an amazing time to be alive and have access to all the world's information.
babbledabbler··on Ask HN: Starting a startup with typed code x none typed code
It depends on what you are comfortable and familiar with and what your business related goals and deadlines are.

TypeScript in the long run is better as it will help ensure that the data flowing through your application is consistent, however, there is an upfront cost to learning to work with types that is not trivial. It will initially slow things down as you grapple with the stricter syntax and the tooling around it. For POCs if you are not an experienced programmer, this will likely add a lot of friction. Keep in mind though that when your application reaches a certain level of complexity, the cost of not having TS starts to exceed the cost of using TS. A good rule of thumb I go by is to try to pick up 1 new technology per project/sub-project. Hope this helps!

babbledabbler··on Apple is working on iPhone features to help detect depression, cognitive decline
This is creepy.
babbledabbler··on Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing
That makes sense. App stores add a lot of cost both on the platform and developer side, and I think in this case a straight forward scripting api with some well thought security/privacy protections would probably be easier to integrate with.

Will definitely shoot you a note when we've got something built. Thanks!

babbledabbler··on Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing
This is really neat to see. I'm actually working on an idea that involves conferencing and have been using jitsi's open source solution for the POC. I've been impressed with the openness and flexibility of the platform.

Are there any plans to enable installable third party app/extensions with talk.brave like zoom is currently rolling out their app store?

babbledabbler··on [dead]
Step 1: Vote.

Step 2: Learn the "red line": If they stop counting the votes in any state, it's a coup.

Step 3: Make a plan to act if the red line is crossed.

https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pd...

Step 4: Get ready and wait.

The more of us that are ready to act, the less likely we will need to.

babbledabbler··on Cold Showers: For when people get too hyped up about things
Cold showers are awesome! Get outta here!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025014/

babbledabbler··on Text-Only Websites
I'm working on static site generator for using plain html...

https://findingmyhtmlgoddess.com/

https://github.com/jonascript/htmlgoddess

babbledabbler··on Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense
I'm working on a framework that treats HTML as a static language https://findingmyhtmlgoddess.com

I agree, we shouldn't need to create a new standard to do what's already possible with existing HTML and some basic constraints and best practices.

babbledabbler··on CERN makes push to build €21B super-collider
If they make a bigger super collider they should call it the super duper collider.
babbledabbler··on Ask HN: What is the cheapest way to make a website?
I'm building a site generator for this very purpose (apologies for the shameless self promotion)....

https://findingmyhtmlgoddess.com

git: https://github.com/jonascript/htmlgoddess

It generates static HTML pages that are as simple as can be. If you setup a git account, it will cover the hosting for free. A domain typically costs $12 a year.

babbledabbler··on A collection of videos of police brutality
I think the issue is that the video files are being hosted on the server so that greatly increases the load that's being consumed for each pageview.

If you host the videos on something like youtube or dailymotion and then embed them it will take the load off your server. Just keep the originals in case they get taken down so you can switch to a different service. Hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you need assistance.

Some options here: https://kinsta.com/blog/video-hosting/

babbledabbler··on Show HN: HTML Goddess – A static site generator to code like it's 1999
Will do!
babbledabbler··on Show HN: HTML Goddess – A static site generator to code like it's 1999
Thank you and totally agree. I'm aiming to package up a GUI interface that would wrap these commands for this very purpose. Domain registration and site hosting (outside of git pages) automation are things I've also thought about. For now it's a WIP. Stay tuned.
babbledabbler··on Show HN: HTML Goddess – A static site generator to code like it's 1999
Great question! The source files are actually HTML so in truth you are editing HTML but just chunks of HTML. I think the benefit is that it assembles and organizes the HTML so you don't have to repeat yourself with various things like nav bars, etc.

Also by using vanilla HTML it makes it possible to find any CSS targeting your vanilla HTML on the internet and drop it in like so. https://findingmyhtmlgoddess.com/blog/post/seeking-html-godd...

In any case, you could totally take the output in the docs folder and never use the framework again if you wanted. :)

babbledabbler··on Show HN: HTML Goddess – A static site generator to code like it's 1999
Hey there, prophet of the HTML Goddess here.

I created this as an exercise in working within constraints, and to hopefully make building a website more accessible to people.

I hope to improve this and make it better (and beta) in the near future so would love any feedback or suggestions. Thank you for checking out my framework!

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